-The Hindu The Census in India is about many things — it must be made a priority and used to affirm a sense of comradeship Among the best uses of a census anywhere in the world was perhaps what happened in the United States when, in 1850 and 1860, anti-slavery campaigners used numbers from two consecutive national censuses to build support for the abolition of slavery. They showed the number of enslaved...

-Peoples' Dispatch A convergence of factors such as extreme heat waves, melting glaciers, and heavy monsoon rainfall explains the scale of floods in the country. All these factors are connected to climate change Floods have devastated Pakistan this year, with 33 million people affected and more than 1,200 killed. Rivers breaching their banks coupled with the bursting of glacial lakes inundated almost one-third of the country, causing a massive economic loss. Recovery...

Is India going to face inflation in cereal prices during the rest of the current financial year? Experts differ on this. An analysis by Nomura Global Economics and CEIC finds that a below normal monsoon does not always translate into high retail inflation in food. Similarly, an above normal southwest monsoon does not always bring down the rate of food inflation. However, some agricultural experts (please click here, here and...

-ThePrint.in A hit to India’s rice output could lead to a major policy overhaul as it arrives on the back of a lower wheat harvest. New Delhi: After a severe heat wave in April-May singed India’s wheat crop, leading to a ban on exports, planting of rice, the main rain-fed crop in the ongoing kharif season, has been hit due to patchy rains in several states. Major rice-growing states such as Uttar Pradesh,...

-TheWire.in A recent CAG report paints a sobering picture of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board's performance. A recently tabled Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report has raised critical questions over the functioning of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board. Let’s start with the most startling revelation. According to the national auditor, the welfare board, which comes under the Delhi government’s labour department, spent a meagre Rs...